Acronis 2011 restore from TIB - works but I get Windows Product Activation message

[feinberj]

I purchased the Acronis 2011 TrueImage home edition in order to back up my father's Windows laptops. It has an option to load a bootable system onto a flash drive - very handy for a NetBook. It also has the option to create a boot CD by simply writing an ISO file. I backed up the netbook over the network and saved the TIB file to my Mac.

Just for fun, I created that Acronis boot CD as an ISO file, and then created a blank VM and set it to boot from the Acronis ISO. It booted just fine into the Acronis 2011 TrueImage mini-OS, and I then proceeded to "restore" my father's netbook onto my new VMware Fusion VM. VERY cool!

Unfortunately, there's a fly in the ointment. I am getting the "Windows Product Activation" message when I boot into the VM. Does this more or less mean that I have to use the VMware migration agent if I am to avoid the Windows Product Activation problem?

Thanks,

John F

New York, NY

[asatoran]

...created a blank VM...then proceeded to "restore" my father's netbook onto my new VMware Fusion VM....I am getting the "Windows Product Activation" message when I boot into the VM...

This is normal and expected. Windows detects the changed hardware and wants to reactivate. (In this case, Windows see's VMware virtual hardware, which is different from the netbook's hardware.) You'd get the same issue if you tried to restore the netbook image to physical desktop computer, for example. The only way to not get the message is to restore to exactly the same hardware. (i.e.: restore directly to the netbook.)

Additionally, if the Windows on the netbook came pre-installed with the netbook, then it's also likely that it wouldn't activate correctly in the virtual machine. And you're probably not legally allowed to use a second instance of Windows anyway, (unless you have some sort of volume license.)

So simple answer: you need to install a new copy of Windows to the virtual machine.

[feinberj]

This certainly makes sense. This then leads me to ask how the VMware migration agent works. If I install the migration agent onto the NetBook and use that to create a VM, then I will not get the windows activation message even though it's the same OS running on the same "machine" (i.e. VMware on my Mac).

[WoodyZ]

You will still get WPA regardless of the method you use to transfer Windows installed on one computer to a different computer, physical or virtual.

Also if the version of Windows is an OEM that you cannot legally transfer it to another computer, physical or virtual!

[asatoran]

You will still get the reactivation message. Migration Assistant basically does what you've already done with Acronis (imaging a system, then restoring the image into a virtual machine.) It does not remove the need for Windows reactivation.

For your case specifically, if you wanted to use the image version of the Windows installation instead of installing Windows clean from scratch, you would need to do a "repair install" using a retail Windows installer disk. (Or other non-branded, non-OEM, Windows installer disk.) But there could be issues with the preinstalled software that I won't go into here. In general, best to do a clean install except in certain restricted situations. So basically, you need to purchase an additional copy of Windows for legal reasons, and if you have that, you may as well use it to create a new virtual machine from scratch anyway, thus "fixing" the activation issue.